Freedom from Hunger recently found that 30 percent of income of the poorer households in West Africa is spent on just one disease—malaria!  And the World Health Organization says a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds.

Even more remarkable is how easy it is to prevent malaria—or at least reduce the frequency of infection.  Just sleep under a mosquito net!  For this reason, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (based at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland), is pushing for widespread distribution of nets in countries with high infection rates, especially in Africa.

Shockingly, Freedom from Hunger has also found that most rural West Africans do not know that getting bitten by a mosquito is the one and only cause of malaria.  Think how hard it would be to persuade people to sleep under a mosquito net if they don’t know that mosquitoes are the cause of malaria!  Distribution of mosquito nets is not enough to ensure their proper use to prevent malaria or to teach people to recognize the symptoms of malaria in their children and to know what to do when malaria strikes.

Urge the Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership to explore opportunities to use diverse distribution networks beyond the health sector—microfinance institutions, agriculture services, primary and secondary schools, cell phone providers, or any local organization successfully engaging with poor communities vulnerable to malaria—to reach rural, under-served areas with both insecticide-treated nets and quality education to promote their use.